Honest, intellectual thought naturally abhors censorship. There can be no thinking where there is no expression of diverse, even opposing opinions. In this respect, the church has absolutely every right to state that it worships the landowner and wants tho subjugation of the landless. It has a right to hate the worker for trying to emancipate themselves -- and, likewise, the worker has a right to hate the church for its ignorance and cruelty. But, it is something entirely different when the church arms itself and then uses violence to slaughter its opponents when it cannot win by arguments. Yet, this is virtually the case everywhere the church has started to lose ground: the resort to cruel violence against the workers.

     History books mention it a few hundred are killed during St. Barthomolew's Day Massacre, because they were killing Protestants, who also supported Capitalism historically. They don't mention it when tens of thousands are killed, such as during the Paris Commune, because the Catholic armies were killing organized Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists. In Ludlow, Colorado, the National Guard shot and killed 19 workers for striking, following directly the orders of Rockefeller -- and not anything even mildly resembling the general will of the people. This is Capitalism: as long as almost everyone works for almost nothing, you have the right to life. Otherwise, you don't. The profits from this business were used to build up the churches throughout America, and so the pastors from one end of the nation to the other condoned the massacre...

"Workingwomen! Keep away from the Y. W. C. A. as you would from a pesthouse. It is based upon the slavery and torture of the workers of America, upon the bodies of toilers who have been killed in the mines and factories, and upon the bodies of those who have protested against being so murdered--shot down by Maxim guns and burned up with Standard Oil. These substantial buildings have been built by those Christians who riddled the bodies of women and children with bullets when they attempted to escape from a burning pit to a place of safety. It is they who are conferring favors upon you, in order to rob you of your freedom.

"They want to inculcate in you the stupid spirit of submission to their mastery. They want to feed you upon the vapid innocuities of religion. They want to make you keep books with their God. They want to keep you in stupid ignorance of your own body, so that you, too, will some day be forced to breed children who can perform their horrible wholesale murders for them--who will shoot down all men and women and children who may dare question their mastery and their tyranny. They will force you to breed the cowards who murder those who are willing to die for freedom rather than to live in slavery.

"But remember Ludlow! Remember the men and women and children who were sacrificed in order that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., might continue his noble career of charity and philanthropy as a supporter of the Christian faith.

"Steer clear of those brothels of the Spirit and morgues of Freedom!" [*14]

     During World War 2, George Orwell was very conflicted at whether to support the Allies in crushing the Nazis, or just to support the crushing of the Nazis. After all, he pointed out, prisoner for prisoner, the Allies have significantly many more people exploited and oppressed than Nazi Germany. [*15] This fact, too, doesn't appear much in the history books, and yet no professional journalist could deny it. Scenes like those produced at Ludlow must have been a strong, determining factor, as Britain similarly affords many examples of violent oppression of the workers.

     During the 1800's, the missionaries of Europe were fighting for the right to spread their religion, as well as their commerce, in Japan. The Japanese had decided to bar all foreigners. This was a carefully calculated strategy based on the experience of Japan's neighbors, India and China, who had been essentially become colonies of slaves to European masters. Yet, the arguments used by the Christian missionaries in demanding a right to Japan are almost funny...

"The compulsory exclusion of the Japanese is a wrong not only to themselves, but to the civilized world... The Japanese undoubtedly have an exclusive right to the possession of their territory; but they must not abuse that right to the extent of debarring all other nations from a participation in its riches and virtues. The only secure title to property, whether it be a hovel or an empire, is, that the exclusive possession of one is for the benefit of all." [*16]

     The Japanese, when they prohibit foreign Capitalists from exploiting their people, are being "exclusive" and they are stopping others "from a participation in its riches and virtues." Isn't this the exact reason why Socialists and Unionists have been fighting to overthrow Capitalism for the past century or so? Of course. However, the church today no longer talks about how property ought to be "for the benefit of all." That rhetoric was useful back when they wanted to convince Britain to invade Japan -- not today when it might be associated with revolutionary Socialism. The poor ought to be excluded, but never the rich.

     This statement was co-authored by clergy and merchants in 1852 -- they didn't yet worry about Socialism or unionism, which were underdeveloped, because Capitalists more thoroughly controlled the government and workers didn't even have the right to vote. They could talk about things like "the benefit of all" and equal right to wealth, without arousing any suspicion. What they had really meant was the benefit of a few capitalists, merchants, and missionaries who were going to exploit and dominate the Japanese people. "Oh, the great miserable wrong of making our Capitalists go with only 90% of the total profit that could have been accumulated," the priest cries and moans, as the dead bodies of striking workers at his feet don't even catch mild attention.

     Directly at the barrel of a gun, or indirectly with the threat of imprisonment, the church has sanctioned every type of violence and force imaginable. In Australia in 1909, the Church had found rather interesting devices for suppressing the workers' disagreement with Capitalism...

"But, will it be believed? It is an offence in Victoria to give away a leaflet, a paper, a tract or any printed document on a Sunday! We tested it again to the extent of getting fined and gaoled, and the Act is upheld which says: 'No printed document may be sold or disposed of on Sundays,' and to stop Socialist advocacy for two years past the police have upheld this and the courts enforced it." [*17]

     The Catholic Church gave its blessings to the weapons of British, French, Spanish, and even the Eastern Orthodox Russians when it came to destroying the Japanese people. It should hardly be difficult to believe, then, that the Church also gave its blessings to tyrants who had oppressed the working class in its own nation. To quote an anonymous pamphlet distributed by anti-Fascist forces in the peninsula, "Before 1870, the Church had suffered enormously in Italy from the fact that she identified herself with the Bourbon and Austrian tyrants who were keeping my country enslaved." [*18]

     One does not need to restrict their vision to Catholicism in order to see the relationship between church masters and property masters. Martin Luther, for example, was known as a fierce opponent of the bureaucracy, waste, and extravagance of the Catholic Church. His battle was an unconventional struggle against standards in religious power. But when the peasants tried to wage a battle against the conventional standards of serfdom, exploitation, and slavery, he claimed they were heretics. Simply by fighting against those who possess others as slaves, one is doomed to hell, according to the father of Protestantism. As he wrote in 1525, in a brief pamphlet titled "Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants"...

"It does not help the peasants, when they pretend that, according to Genesis i and ii, all things were created free and common and that all of us alike have been baptized....

"Thus it may be that one who is killed fighting on the ruler's side may be a true martyr in the eyes of God, if he fights with such a conscience as I have just described, for he is in God's Word and is obedient to him. On the other hand, one who perishes on the peasants' side is an eternal brand of hell, for he bears the sword against God's Word and is disobedient to him, and is a member of the devil." [*19]

     The spirit of equality, freedom, and communism lurks its head into the public, and the religious thinker charges at it with their feelings of intolerance and inhumanity. It was right for Martin Luther to seize power from other Catholics, because he was gaining the power; but it was wrong for peasants to seize power from their exploiting vassal lords, because it would mean that he, Martin Luther, would be losing power.

     Though Martin Luther started the trend of Protestantism, others who strayed from the Catholic path similarly sided with Capitalist domination. John Calvin, for example, proved that Protestants can be even more egotistic, property-based, and intolerant than Catholics. "Discipline is the nerve of religion," he remarked, [*20] demanding obedience of the workers not just to their masters, but to the place they occupy in society. Everything even remotely useful to relieving the stress of the laborers, from dancing to drinking to singing to games, was prohibited by John Calvin -- he placed no restrictions on letting the poor starve to death, or on the gluttonous consumption of the wealthy nobles. [*21]

     Just as one can find this unbridled support of Capitalism in Protestantism and Catholicism, so one can find it in nations outside of Europe's scope. "...the [Eastern] Orthodox Church in Russia was closely linked to the imperial regime, and it naturally sided with the Whites in the Civil War," writes Russian historian Nicholas V. Riasanovsky. [*22] It should be noted not that the Eastern Orthodox Church did not exclusively fight against Bolshevism, but it exclusively fought for the Capitalist-dominated, church-affiliated monarchy. This means that the church officials came out against the Communists, the Democratic Socialists, the Anarchists, and even the Liberals. Any type of state where the workers have the right to organize is unacceptable -- this was the point of view of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

     To fight its ancient enemy the Eastern Orthodox Church, and to protect its land holdings established for this purpose, the Catholic Church decidedly sided with the Bolsheviks; but this was in its official activity within Russia, while the propaganda outside of Russia condemned the Bolsheviks. [*23] Unlike the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church saw quite clearly that Lenin never had any interest in really creating revolutionary Communism. After all, during World War 1, the Catholic Church had no problem when the German government transported Vladimir Lenin to Russia, so he could create revolution. [*24] This act, too, was most unusual, for Germany to deliver a Russian citizen to his homeland -- as the two nations were currently at each other's throats in World War 1.

     The support for the Soviet Union from the Catholic Church shouldn't be entirely alarming. The church, likewise, loaned its support to nations that created forced labor camps in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe. In Spain, there has been a long history of opposition between any group of workers organized for their rights and any group of clergy trying to preserve their privileges. To quote Spanish historian Chris Ealham concerning the relationship of the Anarchist Revolution of 1936 and opposition to the church...

"...as in the 1909 anti-clerical riots, as a major landowner and financial power, the Church was closely identified with the state and the urban and agrarian elites, a vision that was not dispelled by the vociferous opposition of the clergy to trade unions, both in their publications and from the pulpit. Moreover, many workers, as we saw in Chapter 1, had direct experience of the schools, hospitals, workhouses, orphanages, and borstals, in which the inefficient central state allowed the Church to play a prominent role. For many workers, therefore, the attack on the Church after July 1936 signaled an end to the intrusive presence of the clergy in their everyday lives and a blow against a hated structure of oppression." [*25]

     In 1936, most of the army officials of Spain had gathered around the general Francisco Franco in his coup d'etat against the elected government. The Catholic Church loaned its support, its wealth, its blessings, and its arms to the new dictatorship. It didn't matter that it was a Fascist government that had already built concentration camps; it was more important for Catholics to crush the threat of revolutionary Anarchists and Socialists in Spain. As they wrote in one propaganda piece defending the coup d'etat by the Fascists...

"It was argued that the Communists seized power and attempted to institute a 'Soviet Dictatorship,' and were violating civil rights in Spain before the Army rose in revolt. The Catholic spokesmen stated that the reason Catholics supported the insurrection was to 'save themselves from destruction and annihilation, not only as Catholics but as citizens.' Charges of Insurgent [Fascist] atrocities were denied while it was maintained that the Communists had burned 'all' the Catholic churches in the area they controlled, had destroyed 'all' religious objects, and had 'massacred virtually all priests in an attempt to destroy the Catholic religion.' In conclusion the statement asserted that the Madrid Government then ruling Spain did not represent the will of the people, as two thirds of the Spaniards had 'freely and enthusiastically acclaimed loyalty and allegiance to General Franco.'" [*26]

     The belief that the majority of Spain supported Franco eventually subsided, or at least, was covered up and ignored. When Francisco Franco won the war in 1939, the Church hushed anyone who made suggestions about reinstituting elections. The Fascist dictatorship had been permanently established, with the sanction of the Catholic Church. The history of the intermingling of Catholicism and Capitalism in Spain goes back for centuries, though. To quote Gerald Brenan...

"The leaders of this movement were, of course, the Jesuits. Theirs was the policy -- originated three centuries before by their founder -- of winning over the rich and the powerful. For this they needed money. And indeed Spain provided a tempting investment for the general funds of their Society: money laid out there would bring not only a good return but also immediate political power. And so their wealth in the Peninsula began to mount up -- composed as it was of the investments of the Society abroad and of the new bequests made by the pious in Spain -- until it reached really immense proportions. In 1912, according to Joaquín Aguilera, Secretary of the Fomento, they controlled 'without exaggeration one-third of the capital wealth of Spain.' They owned railways, mines, factories, banks, shipping companies, orange plantations. There came to be something almost mythical about their industrial activities." [*27]

     Support for Fascism and the police state in Spain naturally came with its support in Italy. In the earlier quoted, anti-Fascist pamphlet from Italy, you can read, "[Pope] Pius XI is closely allied with conservative Lombard circles, noted for their narrowly reactionary and definitely antiproletarian spirit." [*28] And elsewhere, "...the Vatican did its utmost to induce Catholics to vote for Fascist candidates. The most influential of the bishops went actively to work and broadcast the message..." [*29] Finally, there are the words that the Pope himself said about Mussolini, the dictator who crushed the Italian Socialist movement and enslaved his own people...

"...a man such as Providence has sent us, a man devoid of the convictions of the liberal school. For the liberals, all laws, all rules, or rather, misrules, were fetishes, the more intangible and venerable the more ugly and repulsive did they appear." [*30]

     Few people are aware that the Bank of Rome is a Catholic Institution and that it acts as a financial center for global exploitation of the working poor. Fewer people are aware that it has often gone into "bankruptcy," which was simply a ploy for using the state to overtax the people on behalf of the church...

"When in 1923 bankruptcy threatened one of the big banks, the Bank of Rome, to which most Italian Catholic institutions and the Vatican itself had entrusted vast sums of money, this bank was rescued from failure in order to please the Vatican and at the expense of the taxpayers. The cost of this operation was never disclosed, but according to reliable sources it amounted to about 1.5 billion lire." [*31]

     Just as in the case of the church supporting capitalism, there are also many current situations where the church supporting capitalism through violence. In Nicaragua, the United States and the Catholic Church had supported and funded terrorism against the common people, so nobly funded through selling cocaine in the United States. The Church, of course, came out in support of the terrorist Contras in 1984. [*32] The primary reason for support was that the Contras were opposed to the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a Socialist and Left-wing organization.

     In fact, Archbishop Obando y Bravo, who came out to support the burgeoning Fascist dictatorship, had falsely accused the representative government of terrorism -- the exact same trend seen in the development of the Spanish Civil War. After these statements in favor of concentration camps and political police, the Pope promoted Archbishop Obando y Bravo to Cardinal. [*33]

     Nicaragua, like much of central America, is largely Catholic. The voice of its people, demanding freedom from violent dictatorships, were ignored by the "Pro-Life" Pope. The situation was not different in Mexico in 2006...

"She told me that she had gone to the Church, she couldn't stand the fear. 'The soldiers were chasing me,' she told me. She had knocked on the door of the church. 'I don't know who it was, the priest or someone else who answered the door, but I just cried to him, Please let me in, please. Open the door because it's terrible what's happening. Just let me inside the door, that's all.'

"But the priest refused." [*34]

     Violence, when it is enacted on behalf of property and against human life, is considered the greatest honor by the Pope. It is an act treasured by the Protestant Churches, admired by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and revered in the sermons of their subservient preachers. Since it was violence done to destroy Socialism, it must be useful. It must be good according to the will of god. The organized forces of Christianity have been some of the greatest supporters of violence for crushing any type of workers' power, whether expressed by union organizing or workers cooperatives or radical anti-capitalism.